Hunting and Gathering (20 page)

To go into the places which existed by the grace of the sensibility of a few individuals was to be reminded of how futile her own life was . . .

She preferred the aisles of the local Franprix.

Who might understand? Not a soul.

It was a private struggle. The most invisible of all. The most persistent too. And how many nights of office cleaning, toilet scrubbing and solitude would she have to inflict upon herself to get through it?

 
She avoided the art section, she knew it all too well, she'd spent a lot of time here back when she was trying to complete her studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, then, later, for less noble purposes. Anyway, she had no intention of going there now. It was too soon. Or too late, to be precise. It was like the business of the salutary little kick. Wasn't she at a time in her life when she should no longer count on the help of the great masters?

 
Ever since Camille had been old enough to hold a pencil, people had been telling her that she was gifted. Very gifted. Too gifted. Very promising, much too clever, or too spoiled. Often they were sincere; at other times their words were more ambivalent. Their compliments didn't get her anywhere, and today, now that she was good for nothing except frenetically filling up sketchbooks, she told herself she'd gladly exchange her two barrelfuls of dexterity for a teaspoon of artlessness. Or for a blank slate, why not. Poof! and nothing left upstairs. No more technique, no more references, no more know-how, nothing. Begin all over again, from scratch.

A pen, you see, you hold it between your thumb and your index finger. No, wait, you hold it however you want. After that, it's not hard, you don't even think about it. Your hands don't exist anymore. The important thing happens elsewhere. No, this won't do, it's still too pretty. You're not being asked to come up with something pretty, you know. No one gives a damn about pretty. There are children's drawings and glossy magazines for that. So put on your mittens, little genius, little empty shell, yes, go on, put them on, I tell you, and maybe at last you'll see, you'll draw an almost perfect failed circle.

She wandered among the books. She felt lost. There were so many and she'd lost track of what was current for so long that all the covers with their bright red publicity strips made her dizzy. She looked at the jackets, read the blurbs, checked to see how old the authors were and made a face whenever she saw that they were born after her. Not a very smart way to choose a book . . . She went over to the paperbacks. The cheap paper and small type were less intimidating. The jacket of this one, a picture of a kid with a helmet and an old typewriter, was weird, but she liked the way it began:

 
Not bad. On top of that, the book was square and fat and dense. There was dialogue, and bits of letters copied out and fun subtitles. She went on leafing through it and roughly a third of the way into the book came upon this passage:

 
And gave her chair a gentle shake
. . . perhaps that's what's meant by technique?

When she stumbled on this passage, near the end, she closed the book. Now she knew.

 
A head run over in childhood, a mother who was out to lunch, and a little notebook deep in his pocket . . .

What an imagination.

 
A little farther along Camille came upon Sempé's latest collection. She undid her scarf and jammed it together with her coat between her legs so it would be easier to indulge her admiration. She turned the pages slowly and—the same thing happened every time—her cheeks flushed pink. There was nothing she loved so much as this world of great dreamers, the precision of his artwork, the expressions on his characters' faces, the glass porches of suburban bungalows, the old ladies' umbrellas and the infinite poetry of everyday situations. How did he do it? Where did he find it all? There they were: the candles, incense burners and large baroque altar of Camille's favorite sanctimonious little character. This time, the lady was sitting at the back of the church, holding a cell phone and turning slightly to one side as she said,
“Hello, Marthe? It's Suzanne. I'm at Sainte-Eulalie-de-la-Rédemption, you want me to put in an order for you?”

Delicious.

A gentleman in the bookstore turned around to stare when he heard Camille laughing out loud, a few pages later. It was nothing special, though, just a fat lady talking to a pastry chef who was hard at work. He was wearing a pleated chef's toque and a vaguely world-weary expression, and he had an exquisite little potbelly. The lady was saying,
“After all this time, I've remade my life, but you know, Robert, I've never forgotten you.”
And she was wearing a hat in the shape of a cake, a sort of chocolate confection with cream, identical to the one the pastry chef had just finished . . .

 
It didn't take much, just two or three strokes of ink; and yet you could see that the character was fluttering her eyelashes with a certain nostalgic languor, with the cruel nonchalance of women who know they are still desirable . . . Little Ava Gardners of the Parisian suburb, little femmes fatales with the latest Clairol rinse . . .

Six tiny pen strokes to convey all that: How did Sempé do it?

 
Camille put the treasure back in its place, musing that the world could be divided into two kinds of people: those who understood Sempé's drawings, and those who didn't. However naive and Manichean it might appear, her theory seemed to her to be spot-on. She knew a woman, for example, who, whenever she leafed through a
Paris-Match
and came upon one of Sempé's vignettes, could not help complaining, “I really don't see what's so funny. One day someone will have to tell me where I'm supposed to laugh.” It so happened that that person was her own mother. How unlucky could you get?

 
As she made her way toward the cash registers, Camille lifted her eyes and encountered Vuillard's gaze. This was not just a manner of speaking: he was looking right at her. Tenderly.

Self-Portrait with Cane and Boater.
She knew the painting but had never seen such a large reproduction of it. The cover of an enormous catalog. So there must be an exhibition on at the moment? But where?

“At the Grand Palais,” confirmed one of the salesmen.

“Ah?”

 
It was a strange coincidence. She had been thinking incessantly about him over the last few weeks. Her room with its heavy drapes, the shawl over the chaise longue, the embroidered cushions, the overlapping carpets and the warm light of the lamps: more than once the thought had occurred to her that it was like being inside one of Vuillard's paintings. Like being in the bowels of something, a cocoon, timeless, reassuring, stifling, even a bit oppressive.

She leafed through the display copy and was seized by another bout of acute admirationitis. It was so, so beautiful. This woman, as seen from behind, opening a door. Her pink corsage, her long black sheath dress and the perfect curve of her hips. How did he manage to capture that movement? An elegant woman, as seen from behind: the slight sway of her hips.

With nothing but a little bit of black paint.

How was such a miracle possible?

Excerpts from the artist's journal were interspersed throughout the text.

 
His sleeping sister; the nape of Misia Sert's neck; nannies in the square; the motifs on the little girls' dresses; the portrait of Mallarmé with his leaden expression; the studies for the portrait of Yvonne Printemps with her sweet little carnivorous face; the scribbled pages of his diary; the smile of his girlfriend, Lucie Belin. To capture a smile is almost totally impossible, and yet Vuillard succeeded. For almost a century, although we have just interrupted her in her reading, this young woman has been looking up at us with a slightly weary movement of her neck, yet her smile is tender, as if to say, “Ah, it's you?”

 
And there was a little canvas she'd never seen before—not even a canvas in fact, but a sketch.
The Goose.
An amazing thing. Four gentlemen, two of them in evening dress with top hats, trying to catch a goose. The masses of color, the brutal contrasts, the incoherence of perspective. How he must have enjoyed himself that day!

One hour and a stiff neck later, Camille finally raised her head and looked at the price: ouch, fifty-nine euros. No. It wasn't reasonable. Next month, maybe. She already had something else in mind: the music she had heard on the radio the other morning while sweeping the kitchen floor.

Ancestral gestures, a paleolithic broom and a damaged tiled floor: she'd been grumbling between two of the black cabochon tiles when a soprano's voice stopped her in her tracks, making every single hair on her forearms stand on end, one by one. Holding her breath, Camille went closer to listen to the announcer as the piece drew to its close:
Nisi Dominus
by Vivaldi,
Vespri Solenni per la Festa dell'Assunzione di Maria Vergine.

 
Okay, enough daydreaming, enough drooling, enough money spent—time to go to work.

 
The cleaning took longer that night because one of their clients had just had their Christmas party, organized by the workers' council. Josy shook her head in disgust when she saw all the mess they'd made, while Mamadou scavenged dozens of mandarin oranges and mini Danish pastries for her kids. They all missed the last métro but it didn't matter: All-Kleen would pay for their taxis. Oh, the luxury! Giggling, they each chose a driver, and wished each other a merry Christmas two days early, because only Camille and Samia had signed up to work on the twenty-fourth.

37

THE next day, Camille had lunch at the Kesslers'. No way to get out of it. It was just the three of them, and the conversation was animated. No awkward questions, no vague answers, no embarrassed silences. A real Christmas truce. No, wait, there was one instance, when Mathilde expressed concern about the conditions in the maid's room, and Camille had to lie a bit. She did not want to talk about moving out. Not yet. A certain wariness. The obnoxious little punk hadn't left yet and the next psychodrama might be right around the corner.

 
Weighing her present, Camille said, “I know what this is.”

“No.”

“I do!”

“Go on then, tell us, what is it?”

The package was wrapped in brown paper. Camille untied the gift ribbon, put the unopened package down flat in front of her and took out her propelling pencil.

Pierre was beaming. If only this stubborn young lady could get back to work . . .

 
When she had finished, she held up her drawing: the boater, the red beard, eyes like two dark buttons, the dark jacket, the door frame and the tendriled knob of his cane: it was exactly as if she had just copied the cover.

Pierre didn't get it right away.

“How did you do this?”

“I must have spent over an hour yesterday just staring at the cover . . .”

“Do you already have a copy?”

“No.”

He breathed a sigh of relief, then asked, “Have you started working again?”

“A little bit.”

“Like this?” he asked, pointing to the portrait of Edouard Vuillard. “Still the little whiz kid?”

“No, no . . . I've been filling sketchbooks . . . not much really, just little bits and pieces.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

“Yes.”

He quivered with delight. “Ah, excellent. Can you show me something?”

“No.”

“And how is your mother?” interrupted Mathilde with her usual diplomacy. “Still poised at the edge of the abyss?”

“Down in its depths, more like it.”

“So everything's fine, then?”

“Just fine,” said Camille with a smile.

 
They spent the rest of the evening perorating about art. Pierre commented on Vuillard's work, seeking affinities, establishing parallels, and losing himself in endless digressions. Several times he got up to rummage in his library for proof of his insight and, after a while, Camille had to sit all the way at the far end of the sofa to make room for Maurice (Denis), Pierre (Bonnard), Félix (Vallotton) and Henri (de Toulouse-Lautrec).